Lori McDonald is the founder and CEO of Brilliance Business Solutions, a prominent B2B e-commerce development company. As of February 2024, she is also the owner of a specialty food manufacturer called Norsland Lefse.
Why would a busy web development executive acquire a direct-to-consumer producer? I asked her that question and more during a recent conversation. The full audio is embedded below. The transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Kelly Murdoch: You are the CEO of a leading e-commerce development company. Why are you acquiring a food manufacturer?
Lori McDonald: We specialize in working with mid-market manufacturers and distributors. We have acquired smaller manufacturing companies to diversify our revenue streams and gain a deeper understanding of our customers.
wonderful Learning Experience For me and the Brilliance team, this is just the beginning.
The company is called Norsland Lefse. It is smaller than our target development customers, but still offers insight and empathy into what our customers experience every day. We completed the transaction in February 2024.
Murdoch: Tell us about Northland.
McDonald’s: Norsland Lefse is a 40-year-old specialty food manufacturing and distribution company based in Rushford, Minnesota. The company’s flagship product is Lefse, a potato-based, tortilla-like Norwegian flatbread.
They also produce Uffda! chips, a crispy fried snack that is a by-product of lefse, and resell other Norwegian and Scandinavian products.
Northland has about 20 employees, mostly part-time, and does just over $1 million in annual revenue with 270 SKUs. The majority of its sales come from On AmazonIt also operates consumer e-commerce sites. Northland Lefse.
We were small enough that we could operate on e-commerce revenue.
Murdoch: Food delivery seems complicated.
McDonald’s: It was a new learning experience! Most of our products PerishableLefse, like all other products, is perishable, so we do not use any preservatives. We store it in the freezer and refrigerator. Most orders ship via FedEx 2Day with ice packs. Speed of delivery and Operational Efficiency It is important.
Murdoch: You are an expert in e-commerce platforms and back-end systems, what is Norsland’s setup like?
McDonald’s: We don’t have a lot of technology in place yet, but we have it coming. We manually sync our Amazon inventory and orders. We use XPS Ship to manage our shipping, which is integrated with Amazon.
We migrated our e-commerce site from Wix to Brilliance’s partner BigCommerce. The migration took just 3 months. We added many new features and redesigned the site to be mobile friendly.
The Brilliance team did the replatforming and design work for us. I was on the client side, but it was fun and educational. I was the customer.
Progress is being made, but there is still much to be done.
Murdoch: What surprises have you had so far?
McDonald’s: I quickly checked the profitability of my products on Amazon, and some of them were losing money. Losing money Without even realizing it, on Amazon.
We get many more orders through Amazon than through our site. Driving direct sales on NorslandLefse.com was a goal from the beginning. The margins are good, but it’s difficult to implement. This was another eye-opener.
Brilliance’s clients may have thousands of SKUs – Norsland has just 270 – and they realize the complexity of managing margins on so many items across different channels.
I’ve also become more aware of the day-to-day operations and components of a shop. There’s a lot going on: equipment breaks down, staff turnover, stock issues, supplier price increases, and so on. At Brilliance, we work with our clients and know that our work is important. But we now know that there’s a lot more that our clients should be worried about.
Murdoch: You mention plans and goals, can you talk about some of them?
McDonald’s: We are not looking at expanding our SKUs. Less is more in a way. Our two main products are Lefse and Uffda! Chips. We need to market and sell them well. We are also looking at offering subscriptions for Lefse, where you can order and have it delivered throughout the year.
We partnered with digital marketing company Ox Optimal from the beginning. Brilliance focuses on the technical build and design of the site. Ox Optimal Email Marketing and Facebook and Google advertisement.
Murdoch: I look forward to following your progress. How can our listeners contact you or buy Lefse?
McDonald’s: Brilliance Web is our development company. Norsland Lefse is Northland LefseI’m on board LinkedIn.
